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Vaccine hopes rise as Oxford jab prompts immune response among old and young

reuters.com

131–140 of 712 posts

Re: Vaccine hopes rise as Oxford jab prompts immune response among old and young

#131

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think you're vastly overestimating our capacity to build enough vaccines and distribute them over the world, as well as dealing with those who will refuse to vaccinate. Even if we had a vaccine ready for the roll-out today, I don't see us going back to normalish until late 2021 at earliest. As with any vaccine, you'd need about 80% of the population to vaccinate in order for herd immunity to kick in. I feel like we…

Given the low fatality rate for COVID, wouldn't you just want to concentrate vaccination on those most at risk? i.e. the elderly, people with underlying conditions etc. You don't need to eradicate the virus, just stop it affecting the most vulnerable. Everybody else can then carry on as normal (albeit with a slight chance of getting a nasty flu-like illness).

Even if we vaccinate every vulnerable group, no vaccine has 100% success rate. That's why every vaccine we ever had relied on a huge majority of people having it to prevent the virus from reaching those whose vaccine failed.

Not to mention that we already know about long term side effects that have nothing to do with a specific age group, and that there's a chance of re-infection.

Re: Vaccine hopes rise as Oxford jab prompts immune response among old and young

#132

OK, someone tell me why this isn't the good news it sounds like

Because a vaccine that provokes an immune response isn't the hard part. It's making sure it doesn't make people sick, and then scaling it to producing and distributing hundreds of millions of doses.

I mean, its better news than the alternative, but I think "Oxford vaccine produces zero immune response" would be a far less likely outcome.

Re: Vaccine hopes rise as Oxford jab prompts immune response among old and young

#134
post #116

Good news for US BigPharma Merck holding the Oxford patents, while public funding has paid for its research: https://archive.is/aGUJd

Who cares. I'd gladly give this company a couple of billion if it means they can get us back to normal.

Oxford develops the vaccine with public money. We also, god willing, need to manufacture billions of them and transport them around the globe.

For that manufacturing, give me a solid existing multinational with a proven manufacturing record and base please, not some non-profit startup.

Re: Vaccine hopes rise as Oxford jab prompts immune response among old and young

#135
post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

if we're back to normalish by spring next year I think that would be a great outcome, if the messaging to the public would be, buckle down until then I think lockdown complaince could go up

It likely won't be available to everyone in the US until Autumn timeframe. Perhaps even later if the vaccine needs repeated dosages over time. Priority will be health care workers, essential retail, vulnerable etc. By then it will kill at least a million people at the current trajectory. So US needs to start acting more aggressively now.

[deleted]

Re: Vaccine hopes rise as Oxford jab prompts immune response among old and young

#136

This article reinforces that herd immunity between young healthy people would have been the best solution. Our old are going to get sick from vaccines, so the young are going to get it anyway. Next year under 50 year olds will line up for their vaccine. Meanwhile 1.5 years worth of old, obese, and sick people will have died from coronavirus. Wouldn't it have been better if healthy kids and adults caught it in q2 2020…

That option was apparently actively considered by the UK Government's scientific advisory group, but rejected on the basis that it would not actually be possible to prevent transmission from less-vulnerable groups to more-vulnerable groups. Reference: https://archive.is/43ir5

Re: Vaccine hopes rise as Oxford jab prompts immune response among old and young

#137

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why would old people get sick from the vaccine? If we let everyone get it in Q2 2020, millions would have died when we ran out of ventilators.

Not supporting the OP's assertions, but vaccines have some timid / less potent form of the virus.

Thanks, I guess people do get mild flu after the flu vaccine so it would make sense for it to be the same.

Re: Vaccine hopes rise as Oxford jab prompts immune response among old and young

#138

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The virus cannot replicate, the genetic material inside the virus cannot create new viruses as in there are no instructions inside the payload to replicate and assemble new virions. To make the virus for the vaccine you need to use a different virus that when it replicates it creates copies of the actual virus used in the vaccine. Think about it as a self extracting archive that creates copies of an uncompressed file…

Thanks. I guess the thought is that a really unlucky evolutionary accident would be when the other virus capable of replicating and the vaccine meet in a body, and by chance transfer some of those instructions across. I presume that's rare or never seen, but I don't know, and (with a safety-engineering mindset on) I'd automatically consider that a "chance" unless it is ruled out by something.

Anything can happen however we've been using weakened, inactivated and closely related viruses in vaccines for a long time now without any such natural selection accidents occurring.

Re: Vaccine hopes rise as Oxford jab prompts immune response among old and young

#139
post #116

Good news for US BigPharma Merck holding the Oxford patents, while public funding has paid for its research: https://archive.is/aGUJd

Who cares. I'd gladly give this company a couple of billion if it means they can get us back to normal. Oxford develops the vaccine with public money. We also, god willing, need to manufacture billions of them and transport them around the globe. For that manufacturing, give me a solid existing multinational with a proven manufacturing record and base please, not some non-profit startup.

Is it needed to hold the patent to be profitable as a manufacturer ? If the research has been already paid out, I'd prefer healthy competition.

Re: Vaccine hopes rise as Oxford jab prompts immune response among old and young

#140

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think you're vastly overestimating our capacity to build enough vaccines and distribute them over the world, as well as dealing with those who will refuse to vaccinate. Even if we had a vaccine ready for the roll-out today, I don't see us going back to normalish until late 2021 at earliest. As with any vaccine, you'd need about 80% of the population to vaccinate in order for herd immunity to kick in. I feel like we…

Overly cautious about the herd immunity stuff here. We're not going to eliminate the virus completely. That's a given, we should stop aiming for that. If we get to a point where there's a stable number of daily deaths then we're good. (like we have for literally every single fatal illness.)

The moving average of daily deaths in the US has been stable or declining for the past two months.

https://www.worldometers.info/coronavirus/country/us/

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